


The Importunate Corpse

by HelenaHandbasket



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-03-16
Updated: 2005-03-16
Packaged: 2017-10-09 12:22:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/87290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelenaHandbasket/pseuds/HelenaHandbasket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's a queer case, and it may not be murder at all."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Importunate Corpse

The Importunate Corpse  
by Helena Handbasket

 

"Trouble sleeping, Watson?"

I let out a gasp of surprise at the query, for I had thought myself to be alone in the darkened sitting room. I had taken the greatest of care upon entering, carefully avoiding the noisy, loose floorboards with each step of my slippered feet. The voice had come from Holmes' armchair, which he had placed before the window at some point the evening before. He had not yet turned to face me, and I hastily turned up the collar of my dressing gown.

"Holmes..." I stammered.

He peeked, then, around the tall chair-back that had obscured his presence, and waved away the remainder of my response. Instead, he pulled out his pocket watch, regarded it disinterestedly, and snapped it closed again.

"I cannot remember the last time you were astir at this hour."

"My habits have changed since the last time we shared rooms," I replied. "When Mary fell ill I had to rise quite early to tend to her before opening my practice."

He regarded me for a moment, one eyebrow arched, before returning to contemplate the grey February dawn.

We had been back in Baker street for less than a week after the long post-Reichenbach hiatus, and I had not yet reacclimated to living with the world's only consulting detective. I heard the harsh strike of a match and saw the pulsating reflection of orange flame in the window as he lit his pipe. Soon a thin wisp of smoke began drifting up from behind the chair, and I couldn't help but wish he had decided to take his morning smoke a few minutes earlier so that I might have been on my guard.

"And how was your evening at the club?" he inquired.

"Oh, fine," I replied absently. "Very fine indeed."

"I am glad of it. And I am also glad that you managed to recover your overcoat."

This remark startled me into a moment's pause. "Yes. Yes, of course. But how did you...?"

"I noticed an unusual scent upon it as I passed by. A cologne – Italian, I would say. And I know that you never wear scent, so I could only assume that some other fellow took it away by mistake."

"You are right of course," I stammered. "A guest of one of the other members mistook it for his own, but fortunately he realized the error and returned it. I might never have known about the mix-up but that we met in the cloak room as he was making the exchange."

He did not reply to this, but the trail of smoke from his chair grew thicker.

"My habits may have changed," I remarked after a moment, "but I see that yours have not."

He did not reply to this either, but I knew as well as if I were looking directly into his face that he was smiling.

 

* * *

 

Mrs. Hudson had just cleared away our breakfast, and we were lingering over our tea when Lestrade arrived.

Holmes set down The Times and regarded the inspector keenly as he hesitated at the threshold.

"Ah!" he exclaimed. "I see you have a corpse for us."

"Why... yes," said Lestrade in amazement. "His landlady discovered him this morning." He paused uncertainly, less willing than I to inquire into my friend's method of deduction.

Holmes made a dismissive gesture with his hand. "Your hat, Lestrade. When you come about a matter such as burglary or blackmail you remember to remove it. It is only with the murders that you become so agitated as to forget your etiquette."

With a churlish frown, Lestrade removed his hat.

"Shall you give us the particulars?" Holmes continued, "or leave us to deduce them at the scene?"

As it was evident that Holmes did not intend to do so, I gestured Lestrade into an empty chair and offered him a cup of tea. He declined this, keeping hold of his hat and turning it round and round in his hands.

"It's a queer case," he said at last, "and it may not be murder at all. He shows every sign of having a heart attack, but the landlady swears he had company when he returned home last night."

"And did she see this alleged companion?"

Lestrade shook his head. "Unfortunately, no. She merely heard two pairs of footfalls upon the steps."

"Nevertheless, heart attacks are far more common than murder. It seems more likely that the man died after the departure of his guest."

"That's just what we said," said Lestrade, "and the theory was supported by the fact that he died in bed, clad in his nightshirt."

"So whence the uncertainty?"

Lestrade shifted uncomfortably, as if not wholly convinced by his own arguments. "Just a few small things. And we only have the landlady's word, but... it seems her tenant was not a tidy man."

"Few tenants are," said Holmes with a wry smile, gesturing at the disorderly array of newspaper clippings and chemical apparatus strewn about the room.

"Yes, quite," said Lestrade, "but the victim's evening wear was folded neatly on a chair next to his bed. And the port glasses were clean. Mrs. Brook – that's the landlady – claims that he had company for luncheon. But the maid was out sick, and she hadn't had time to attend to the glasses in the afternoon. Nevertheless the glasses were spotless this morning, as if they had never been used at all."

"Mrs. Brook is an observant woman," remarked Holmes. "It seems she was well on her way towards solving the case before you arrived."

Lestrade disregarded this statement. "We think that the poison must have been administered through the port. The culprit washed the glasses to erase the mechanism of his crime and to remove the evidence of his presence."

Holmes nodded thoughtfully. "A meticulous murderer, if woefully shortsighted. What time did the second party depart?"

"That point is uncertain. It was rather late when they arrived, and Mrs. Brook was just turning in. She didn't hear him leave."

"But she's sure it was a man?"

"More than likely. She claims that his footfalls were heavier than the victim's."

"A gem, this Mrs. Brook. You should consider taking her on at Scotland Yard." He smirked and cast me an amused glance, but I was in no humor to return it. Lestrade was no more diverted than I.

"And what of the luncheon guest. Could this be our culprit?"

"Impossible. It was a petite lady of his acquaintance who was traveling to Bath that very afternoon."

"One final question," said Holmes, rising and straightening his coattails. "Does this corpse of ours have a name?"

Lestrade frowned grimly. "He signed the lease as Antonio Corelli, but according to his papers he is Vincento diVierno, the well-known Neopolitan poet."

"What?" I exclaimed. "An alias? Why? Did he have a criminal record?"

"Not that we know of," said Lestrade with a shrug. "The best we can figure is that he wanted to explore London with a degree of anonymity. A man of his means and notoriety could have afforded far better accommodations than a boarding house in Cheapside."

"Or perhaps he had enemies unknown to us," said Holmes with a meaningful lift of his brow. "We shall know more once I've inspected the premises. Come, Watson. Don that odiferous coat of yours, and we'll get a cab."

 

* * *

 

By the time we arrived in Cheapside it was late morning, though scarcely brighter than when I had arisen. A heavy, wet snow was falling, and each clap of the horse's hooves gave rise to an eruption of grey-brown slush. We hurried into the entranceway of the boarding house and wiped our feet under the scrutinizing eye of Mrs. Brook.

"'Is rooms is on the third floor, poor dear," she explained in her rough accent. "I've left 'im just as I found 'im."

With a barely perceptible but courteous bow, Holmes swept up the stairs, with Lestrade and myself trudging after him.

When we entered, he was already on his hands and knees inspecting the fireplace. His face hovered for several moments over the ashes that had spilled into the room from the grate, and then he licked his finger and held it up to gauge the draft wafting out of the flue. Then he returned his attention to the ashes and blew gently upon them. He looked intrigued as he rose and dusted off his trousers, but said nothing.

"Let's have a look at the body," he said at last.

Lestrade lifted his chin at the tiny bed in the corner of the room, where Vincento diVierno still lay, the picture of contented sleep.

Holmes bent over the body and gently nudged the lower lip with his thumb, sniffing daintily at the barely open mouth. "I smell only port and tobacco," he declared, straightening up again. "If this man was poisoned, it was certainly odorless. What do you make of it, Watson?"

I approached the body with a hesitant frown, lifting the eyelids, and turning the head from side to side. "The symptoms are consistent with a heart attack," I said. "He looks to be about forty five – a bit young, particularly with the Neopolitan diet, but not impossibly so."

"Is it likely that he could have suffered a heart attack in his sleep?"

"Well, the affliction occurs more commonly during strenuous activity." Here I cleared my throat and patted self-consciously at my waistcoat. "But it's by no means unheard of."

Holmes nodded. "I can only think of three poisons that would cause such a response without leaving a telltale odor, but there are no symptoms to indicate any of them. So far, the evidence is inconclusive. Anything else?"

I shrugged and shook my head.

"Well, let's have a closer look." He threw back the bedclothes and squinted at the man's nightshirt, a luxurious grey silk incongruously fine for the dingy apartment. "Here, Lestrade, hand me that candle."

He took the candle from its holder and broke off the lower end, prising it gently away from the wick until he was left with a short stub. This he braced between his second and third fingers and held above the corpse, scanning along the buttons of the nightshirt while peering at them from the level of the dead man's chest.

At the top button he exhaled sharply and looked fleetingly at me before fixing his gaze upon Lestrade. "Have your officers been fiddling with this man's garments?"

"Certainly not," the inspector replied with no little pique. "After we made our initial assessment, I told them to touch nothing until I could fetch you."

"Good. Good. Then we now have proof that the mystery guest has sought to deceive us. The evidence of the clothes and the glasses is merely circumstantial; even the most untidy of men may be bullied into a temporary frenzy of neatness, say by an exacting mistress or a chastising letter from his mother." He chuckled hollowly at this before he continued. "But this nightshirt tells us all we need to know. DiVierno did not die in his sleep."

In spite of past experience, Lestrade snorted in reproof. "And how's that, then?"

"Observe," said Holmes, gesturing over the dead man's chest with his palm. "There is a definite consistency with which this fabric reflects candlelight. But here," indicating the top button, "the reflection of the silk is dull. I can detect two distinct smudges – thumbprints, certainly, and several more that are smeared together from the fumbling of the smaller fingers."

Lestrade blinked in perplexity while I, apparently no better at learning from history than the inspector, looked on in amazement.

"The stains are ash from the fireplace, not immediately noticeable because their color precisely matches that of the silk. And it is clearly evident from the pattern of marks that this nightshirt was not buttoned by the man who was inside it. Someone else dressed him. Now, it appears that this someone else, presumably our second man, fastened the first button, noticed that his fingers were dirty, and then wiped them off – probably on his handkerchief – before continuing with the rest. I have no doubt that closer inspection will reveal similar markings from where our culprit maneuvered the nightshirt over the dead man's head. The sleeves are a likely location. Aha! You see, here's another one." He pushed back the sleeve and twisted the arm this way and that. "But he's not stupid, our man. Once he realized his fingers were dirty, he went back and wiped away the smudges he had left on the skin."

Lestrade was impressed, even though he clearly did not want to be. "So our murderer poisoned diVierno, then changed him out of his evening clothes and into his nightshirt, putting him in bed so that it would appear that he died in his sleep. Diabolical!"

"Perhaps," said Holmes, "and perhaps not. Here, help me turn him over."

We did so, and Holmes inspected the man's back, shaking his head. Then, without the least ceremony, he grasped the bottom of the nightshirt and pulled it up, exposing the nudity beneath.

"Holmes!" I cried. "Have a little decency!"

He fixed me, here, with so withering a look that I fell silent.

"I had hoped for more carelessness," he murmured, returning his attention to the corpse.

"What did you expect to find?" asked Lestrade.

"More ash, of course."

"But you said he had wiped it away."

"The fingerprints, yes, but I thought there might be more evidence of the circumstances of diVierno's death." He straightened up and placed two fingers on the dead man's back, running them along a smooth line from his shoulder blade to the top of his buttock. "When diVierno died, this region was covered in ash. If our man had wiped it away with his hand or a handkerchief, there would still be faint remnants, but it appears that he dampened a cloth to clean it thoroughly before dressing him." He pulled the nightshirt back down. "You can see that the fabric is slightly darker on this side. Silk is susceptible to discoloration by even a small degree of moisture."

"But why would his left side be covered in ash?" Lestrade demanded, "if he died while still in his evening wear?"

Holmes pursed his lips impatiently. "Because he wasn't in his evening wear. He was nude."

"Nude?!"

"Yes, stark nude. Don't be a simpleton, Lestrade. If our culprit had undressed diVierno with those smudged fingers of his, it would have come away on the white shirt. He would have noticed it long before he took up the night shirt."

"So the murderer didn't undress diVierno."

Holmes looked up sharply. "Oh, I think he did."

"But..."

"Your naiveté astounds me, Lestrade. It is as if you've just transferred to London from the back counties."

Lestrade widened his eyes. "Oh."

"Note the ashes near the fireplace," Holmes went on, paying no attention to Lestrade's dumbfounded expression. "Now, the top layer has been blown in through the flue in the hours since diVierno's death. But beneath it, another layer is clearly evident. Notice how it has been smeared in long, sweeping arcs, as if by a gentleman's shoe. That is more obscured evidence, Lestrade."

"But what did that evidence show?"

"Watson will attest that I hate to speculate," he replied, glancing at me with a fleeting, and not particularly friendly, smile, "but I imagine it revealed the evidence of two men – one standing, one kneeling. The standing man was seized by a heart attack and fell naked onto his left side. He was caught by his companion just in time to keep him from rolling into the deeper ashes beyond. You see here the diagonal pattern of the ashes that were swept away, clearly indicating the location of the incriminating marks."

Lestrade cleared his throat and frowned distastefully. "That's disgusting."

"It is just what it is," said Holmes coolly, "but what it is not is murder."

"And what am I supposed to tell Scotland Yard?"

Holmes simply shrugged, and I noticed that his expression bore none of the playfulness that usually accompanied his outsmarting of professional detectives. "You tell them the truth," he said flatly, "that this man died of a heart attack. The autopsy will confirm it. I would advise you to omit any further details." At this he straightened up and said, "As you no longer require our services, I believe we shall depart. Watson? May I tempt you to join me in a late lunch?"

And thus we left Lestrade, shivering in the dismal winter draft and staring in bald-faced revulsion at the fireplace of a dead man.

 

* * *

 

Holmes was typically sullen as we ate our lunch, already sinking into his post-case depression, and I wasn't much better. We hardly spoke in the cab back to Baker Street, and what little we said was minutia unrelated to the day's case.

When we got back to our rooms, I muttered something about being tired and angled for my bedroom, but Holmes arrested me with a soft, "Watson."

I turned around to find him leaning against the door frame, an inscrutable expression upon his face. He took a step into the sitting room and closed the door quietly behind him. After a moment he reached into his coat and extracted a single, white handkerchief.

My hand shot to my breast pocket only to find it predictably empty. I looked up at Holmes in horror as he held the object out, without disgust or derision, but with an ample share of accusation. Without speaking, he unfolded the cloth to reveal the damning stains of ash.

"How did you know?" I asked, but his darting eyes answered the question immediately. "You recognized the cologne?"

"I did," he replied, "but even before Lestrade brought the news, I knew that you had not spent last evening at your club. I detected the odor of at least four kinds of tobacco in addition to your own on your overcoat, and three of those would never be smoked by a gentleman of means. Though I was not certain why, I was quite aware that you had been visiting the unseemlier parts of London."

"Well congratulations," I spat, struggling to muster enough affront to hide my fear. I had known, deep down, that I couldn't hide my nature from him for long, yet fool that I was, I had not been able to resist the lure of Baker Street, of renewing our imbalanced partnership. I had been dreading this conversation ever since his return.

"I want to know why." he said simply. "Why did you do this?"

I scoffed at this, unable to believe that such a brilliant man could be so dense. "Why do you think?" I demanded. "When Antonio died so suddenly... it was all too obvious what had been going on. I wasn't worried for myself: the hour was late and no one had seen me. But I couldn't let him be discovered in so ignominious a state. So I did what I could to erase the evidence of my presence and preserve his dignity. I barely knew him, but it was the least I could do. But now you've made it quite apparent that even this small gesture was an act of futility." I took several shuddering breaths, strangely grateful that my anger could momentarily eclipse the shame and remorse that had been consuming me since the previous night.

"You mistake my question," he countered. "I meant to ask why you didn't tell me."

I laughed and shook my head. "You have been out of England too long, Holmes. Whatever they may do on the continent, gentlemen here do not discuss such things."

This seemed to vex him, and he returned to the previous subject. "If it's any consolation," he said, edging towards the fire in the way that was a little too obvious in his deliberate effort not to keep his distance, "Lestrade would have never figured out what happened on his own. You've successfully outsmarted Scotland Yard."

"I don't care!" I exclaimed, storming towards him just for the masochistic satisfaction of watching him flinch.

He did not flinch, however, and I was obliged to lean awkwardly against the mantelpiece, facing him within an arm's reach.

Neither smiling nor frowning, Holmes continued. "If not for the formidable Mrs. Brook, he wouldn't even have realized that anything unusual had transpired. Perhaps you should heretofore consider her your nemesis."

I narrowed my eyes in disgust at his callousness. I had not expected him to understand or accept what I had done, but I did not think him so cold as to mock me for it. "A man is dead because of me," I cried. "Can you not understand what that means? How it plagues me?"

His steely look softened into one of surprise, as if he had expected me to take his jest in good humor. "At least he died happy," he said quietly, "of that I am sure."

I paused, confused by the apparent sincerity in his tone. "You're mocking me," I said, but with little conviction.

Slowly, Holmes shook his head. "I am not. Were I to die tonight, I can think of no way I would rather do so."

Confused, I just stared at him, trying to figure out whether he was cruel, mad, or delusional.

"Your habits may have changed during our separation, Watson, but mine are just as they always were." And with this he reached forward to cup my face in his hand, pulled me toward him, and kissed me.

Though startled, I relaxed into the press of his soft lips and felt the tip of his aquiline nose brushing against my cheek. Soon his hand closed upon my waistcoat and pulled me closer, pressing his lean body against mine. And though I still felt the sting of Antonio's death, I found myself grateful that my habits had changed and that Holmes, ever steadfast in his ways, had been willing to wait.

 

End.


End file.
